Infants and other incontinent individuals wear disposable absorbent articles such as diapers to receive and contain urine and other body exudates. Training pants or pull-on diapers have become popular for use on children able to walk and often who are toilet training. Many disposable pull-on garments use elastic elements secured in an elastically contractible condition in the waist and/or leg openings. Typically, in order to insure full elastic fit about the leg and the waist such as is provided with durable undergarments, the leg openings and waist opening are encircled at least in part with elasticized bands of rubber or other materials positioned along the periphery of the respective opening.
While it may be believed that a stretchable waist opening generating high contraction force contributes to anchoring the waist opening of the pull-on diapers to the wearer's body, such high contraction force sometimes causes not only difficulty for a caregiver to apply and remove the absorbent article, but may also cause sagging of the waist opening of the pull-on diaper. The front portion of the waist opening is positioned on stomach of the wearer, which is considered a high motion zone that undergoes repeated expansion and contraction as the wearer breathes, sits, squats or bends. When the stomach expands, the contraction force increases to generate a relatively higher anchoring force. However, as the contraction force increases, the component force of the contraction wants to move from the high force state to a lower force state and as such the elasticized region tends to move from the higher circumference higher force region toward the crotch along the curvature of the belly to a smaller circumference lower force region of the wearer. In other words, when a relatively high component force is exerted on the stomach of the wearer especially wearers with a round belly, one wherein the waist circumference decreases toward the crotch of the wearer, the waist portion of the pull-on diaper will seek a minimum force state, i.e. smaller circumference thereby causing the diaper waist to sag.
In order to reduce potential sagging caused by high contraction force exerted on the stomach, high motion zone, it is conceivable to remove or reduce the elastic material in the front center waist portion and the back center waist portion. However, if the elastic material is removed therefrom, another drawback occurs. Namely, the front center waist portion has no contraction force and therefore may not adequately compensate for the movements of wearer. As a result, the front waist portion may flip over or may form gaps as a result of the wearer's movement. Such flipping-over or gapping of the waist portion is also as problematic as sagging since it gives a poor impression of the pull-on diaper to the wearer or caregiver and may result in a loss of performance, leakage of exudates from the article. Furthermore, improvements in the absorbent core have led to thinner more flexible absorbent structures that may also influence the way the elastic material interacts with the body thereby impacting the overall fit and performance of the product.
Based on the foregoing, there is a need for a disposable pull-on garment to provide an improved fit around the waist opening and/or leg openings. There is also a need for a disposable pull-on garment to improve sagging and or gapping problems around the waist opening. There is also a need for a disposable pull-on garment to improve flip-over problems in the waist portion. Additionally, there is a need for designing the waist opening to allow a caregiver to easily apply and remove the absorbent article.